The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 88th Precinct.[3] "The Hill", as the general area was known – with a maximum elevation of 95 feet (29 m), the highest in the area[1] – was believed to have health benefits because many people believed that germs were more prevalent in low-lying areas. The area is named after Clinton Avenue, which in turn was named in honor of New York Governor DeWitt Clinton (1769–1828).[4] The main thoroughfare is DeKalb Avenue.[1]

The neighborhood's mixture of apartment buildings, mansions, brownstone and brick rowhouses, and the Pratt Institute and St. Joseph's College, built at various times in a number of different styles, is a great part of its charm.[5]

Contents

History1

Demography2

Landmarks3

Gallery4

Education5

Transportation6

Notable residents7

References8

External links9

History

The area’s European history began in the 1640s, when Dutch settlers laid tobacco plantations near Wallabout Bay. Bedford Corners, situated just southeast of Clinton Hill, was incorporated in 1663, and the settlers (both Dutch and French Huguenot) purchased surrounding lands from the native Lenape in 1670.[4]

On August 27, 1776, the "Road to Jamaica" (approximately Atlantic Avenue, the southern edge of today’s neighborhood) was used by the British army in a surprise overnight march to outflank the American army, which was forced to retreat toward Gowanus Creek, and two nights later, to Manhattan. After the war, the Dutch continued to build on the land, which sloped toward the East River and offered great views of the water and of Manhattan.[4]

The tree-lined Clinton Avenue was laid out as a boulevard along the crest of the hill in 1832,[1] and by the 1840s, Clinton Hill and neighboring Navy Yard.[4] Whitman, a 28-year resident of Brooklyn, had lived for less than a year in the area in 1855, where he completed his masterpiece Leaves of Grass. The 1995 New Yorker article "Walt Whitman’s Ghost”[6] identified the address as 99 Ryerson Street, which still stands.[4]

In the 1860s, after the Civil War, Clinton Hill was developed with row houses,[7] which dominated the street scene by the 1880s.[1] These attracted affluent professionals.[1]

The area's development continued after Charles Pratt, an oil executive, built a mansion at 232 Clinton Avenue, which is now part of the Brooklyn campus of St. Joseph's College's. Pratt also built houses there for his sons, which he gave to them as wedding gifts; other mansions followed,[1] part of the general migration of merchants from New York City (Manhattan) to Brooklyn,[8] and the area became known as Brooklyn's "Gold Coast".[5] Pratt founded the Pratt Institute in 1887, and its campus remains a focus of the neighborhood.[1]

After the late 1870s, Clinton Hill was one of the stops on the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway (BF&CI, now the Brighton subway line), an excursion line which would bring families from the neighborhood to Brighton Beach for a day of recreation, and allow them to be home "at a reasonable hour". Entire families would use the BF&CI to relocate to the newly built Brighton Beach Hotel – owned by the same men who built the railroad – for the summer months, while the paterfamilias commuted to New York via ferry to work.[9]

By 1900, apartment buildings were being built on Clinton Avenue, which replaced the mansions there and on Washington Avenue by the 1920s and 40s. In addition some of the remaining mansions were converted into rooming houses in the following decades, and urban renewal, part of Robert Moses' relentless rebuilding of the city, cleared five blocks south of the Pratt Institute, destroying the brownstones there. This was followed in the 1970s by the brownstone revival, in which many of the remaining brownstones were restored.[1]

Demography

Clinton Hill's population is racially mixed, with 55% of the residents white or Asian and 45% African American. Ethic groups represented include people of Italian descent and immigrants from the Caribbean. The residents include many "artists, architects, photographers, and craftspeople". In the 21st century, the neighborhood has experienced a significant increase in population, with increased gentrification and a growing upper-middle-class population.[1]

St. Mary's Episcopal Church at 220 Classon Avenue in Clinton Hill, built c.1859, and the Mechanics Temple, which was built at 67 Putnam Avenue as the Lincoln Club in 1889, are both part of the historic district.[1][11]

Other buildings in the Historic District include a Gothic Revival wooden house at 284 Clinton Avenue, built c.1854; an Italianate brick and stone villa dating from c.1850 at 447 Clinton Avenue, intact runs of mid-19th century rowhouses on Grand Avenue, St. James Place and Cambridge Place as well as on DeKalb Avenue and Waverly Avenue; mansions frop the "Gold Coast" era in the 200 to 400 blocks of Clinton Avenue;[note 1] and at 367 Washington Avenue; and apartment houses on Clinton Avenue.[5][11]

On Lafayette Avenue can be found both the Emmanuel Baptist Church, completed in 1887, and the Joseph Steele or Steele-Skinner House of 1812, while Clinton Avenue offers the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew (1891) and the Royal Castle Apartments, completed in 1912. All are individually landmarked.[1][5][11]

Many of the buildings of the Pratt Institute are landmarked, or of architectural interest, and St. Joseph's College utilizes several of the former Pratt family mansions on Clinton Avenue.[11]

The brick building at 275 Park Avenue was once for a chocolate factory that produced and distributed Tootsie Rolls throughout the United States. In 2002, the building was converted into loft apartments.

Gallery

200 Lafayette Avenue, Joseph Steel or Steele-Skinner House
(1812)

447 Clinton Avenue, originally the David Burdette House, later the Galilee Baptist Church
(c.1850)

Education

The Pratt Institute, founded by Charles Pratt in 1887, is located in Clinton Hill. Pratt began as an engineering school, designed to train immigrants in then-novel sciences.[4] Today the prestigious school is known for having some of the highest ranking programs in architecture, graphic design, interior design, and industrial design.

^Sontag, Deborah. "A Caged Man Breaks Out at Last ", The New York Times, February 25, 2009. Accessed August 16, 2015. "Afterward he sold his Williamsburg building, bought and renovated the loft in Clinton Hill, traveled with more frequency to China, married Ms. Li and eventually worked with the curators interested in shaping his legacy."

^, April 3, 2013, 12:26 p.m.Bed-Stuy Patch, in Biggie's 'One-Room Shack' in Bed-Stuy Now up for SaleMorris, C. Zawadi, , as accessed December 10, 2013.

^"Back in the U-S-S-Yards". Curbed.com. March 11, 2010. Retrieved 2010-03-16.

^Rush Arts Corridor Gallery

^Hogarty, Dave. "Third Home's a Hideous Charm for Susan Sarandon in Brooklyn", Curbed, January 31, 2012. Accessed August 16, 2015. "Try not to let the exterior fool you; Susan Sarandon's third and most recent real estate purchase in the last seven months does not mean she has lost her mind in a buying binge. The rather hideous front of 334 Grand Avenue in Clinton Hill conceals a considerably nicer interior."

^"Patti Smith Remembers Life With Mapplethorpe". Retrieved July 11, 2010.

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